Soft Machine are an English rock band from Canterbury formed in mid-1966. As a central band of the Canterbury scene, the group became one of the first British psychedelic acts and later moved into progressive rock and jazz fusion.[1] Having known numerous line-ups, the band currently consists of John Etheridge (guitar), Theo Travis (saxophone, flutes, keyboards), Fred Baker (bass) and Asaf Sirkis (drums).
| Soft Machine discography | |
|---|---|
| Studio albums | 12 |
| Year | Album | Line-up | Additional musicians |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1968 | The Soft Machine | Mike Ratledge, Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers | Hugh Hopper |
| 1969 | Volume Two | Ratledge, Wyatt, Hopper | Brian Hopper |
| 1970 | Third | Ratledge, Wyatt, Hopper, Elton Dean | Lyn Dobson, Nick Evans, Jimmy Hastings, Rab Spall |
| 1971 | Fourth | Evans, Hastings, Mark Charig, Roy Babbington, Alan Skidmore | |
| 1972 | Fifth | Side 1: Ratledge, Hopper, Dean, Phil Howard Side 2: Ratledge, Hopper, Dean, John Marshall |
Babbington |
| 1973 | Six | Ratledge, Hopper, Marshall, Karl Jenkins | |
| 1973 | Seven | Ratledge, Marshall, Jenkins, Babbington | |
| 1975 | Bundles | Ratledge, Marshall, Jenkins, Babbington, Allan Holdsworth | Ray Warleigh |
| 1976 | Softs | Marshall, Jenkins, Babbington, John Etheridge, Alan Wakeman | Ratledge |
| 1981 | Land of Cockayne | Marshall, Jenkins, Holdsworth, Warleigh, Jack Bruce, Dick Morrissey, Alan Parker, John Taylor | |
| 2018 | Hidden Details[2][3][4] | Marshall, Etheridge, Babbington, Theo Travis | Nick Utteridge |
| 2023 | Other Doors | Marshall, Etheridge, Travis, Fred Baker | Babbington |
| Recorded | Released | Album | Line-up |
|---|---|---|---|
| April – December 1967 (includes some studio recordings) | 2001 | Soft Machine Turns On Volume 1 | April – June 1967 recordings: Mike Ratledge, Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers, Daevid Allen September – December 1967 recordings: Ratledge, Wyatt, Ayers |
| September 1967 – May 1968 | 2006 | Middle Earth Masters | Ratledge, Wyatt, Ayers |
| November 1967 – August 1968 | 2001 | Soft Machine Turns On Volume 2 | |
| March 1969 | 1996 | Live at the Paradiso 1969 | Ratledge, Wyatt, Hugh Hopper |
| January 1970 | 2000 | Noisette | Ratledge, Wyatt, Hopper, Elton Dean, Lynn Dobson |
| January 1970 | 2005 | Breda Reactor | |
| January 1970 | 2022 | Facelift France & Holland CD 2 | |
| March 1970 | 2022 | Facelift France & Holland CD 1 + DVD | |
| April 1970 | 2004 | Somewhere in Soho | Ratledge, Wyatt, Hopper, Dean |
| April 1970 | 2002 | Facelift | |
| November 1969 – May 1970 | 2002 | Backwards | November 1969 recordings: Ratledge, Wyatt, Hopper, Dean, Dobson, Mark Charig, Nick Evans May 1970 recordings: Ratledge, Wyatt, Hopper, Dean |
| August 1970 | 1988 | Live at the Proms 1970 | Ratledge, Wyatt, Hopper, Dean |
| October 1970 | 2006 | Grides | |
| February 1971 | 2009 | Live at Henie Onstad Art Centre 1971 | |
| February 1971 | 2024 | Høvikodden 1971 (includes all of above plus another concert at the same venue the previous day) | |
| March 1971 | 1998 | Virtually | |
| March 1971 | 1993 | Soft Machine & Heavy Friends: BBC in Concert 1971 | |
| December 1967 – June 1971 | 2003 | BBC Radio 1967 – 1971 | Various line-ups including Ratledge, Wyatt, Ayers, Hopper, Brian Hopper, Dean, Dobson, Charig and Evans |
| June 1969 – November 1971 | 1990 | The Peel Sessions (all tracks here later included with others on BBC Radio 1967 – 1971 and BBC Radio 1971 – 1974) | Various line-ups including Ratledge, Wyatt, H. Hopper, B. Hopper, Dean, Dobson, Charig, Evans and Phil Howard |
| November 1971 | 2008 | Drop | Ratledge, H. Hopper, Dean, Howard |
| May 1972 | 2008 | Live in Paris | Ratledge, H. Hopper, Dean, John Marshall |
| June 1972 | 1994 | Soft Stage: BBC in Concert 1972 | Ratledge, H. Hopper, Marshall, Karl Jenkins |
| October – November 1972 | 1973 | Six Disc 1 | |
| May 1973 | 2010 | NDR Jazz Workshop Hamburg, Germany CD + DVD | Ratledge, Marshall, Jenkins, Roy Babbington |
| October 1973 | 2023 | The Dutch Lesson | |
| July 1974 | 2015 | Switzerland 1974 CD + DVD | Ratledge, Marshall, Jenkins, Babbington, Allan Holdsworth |
| November 1971 – August 1974 | 2003 | BBC Radio 1971 – 1974 | Various line-ups including Ratledge, H. Hopper, Dean, Howard, Marshall, Jenkins, Babbington and Holdsworth |
| January 1975 | 2006 | Floating World Live | Ratledge, Marshall, Jenkins, Babbington, Holdsworth |
| October 1975 | 2005 | British Tour '75 | Ratledge, Marshall, Jenkins, Babbington, John Etheridge |
| July 1977 | 1978 | Alive & Well: Recorded in Paris | Marshall, Jenkins, Etheridge, Ric Sanders, Steve Cook |
| February 2019 | 2020 | Live at The Baked Potato | Marshall, Etheridge, Babbington, Theo Travis |
| Recorded | Released | Album | Line-up |
|---|---|---|---|
| April 1967 | 1972 | Jet Propelled Photographs (gained this title in 1988, previously released under various other titles including Faces and Places Vol. 7 and At the Beginning) | Mike Ratledge, Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers, Daevid Allen |
| 1969 | 1996 | Spaced | Ratledge, Wyatt, Hugh Hopper, Brian Hopper |
| Year | Album | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1977 | Triple Echo | A "best of" album, including both sides of their first single and material from all the albums up to Softs (the most recent at the time) |
These albums were either released by small labels with most of their content available on the main albums listed above or are reissues/"Best of" collections released by major labels with all previously released material.
| Year | Album | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1972 | Rock Generation Vol. 7 | One side only, April 1967 De Lane Lea Studios demo recordings with Giorgio Gomelsky. |
| 1972 | Rock Generation Vol. 8 | One side only, more April 1967 demo recordings. This and the preceding entry were combined on many subsequent releases, under such titles as Faces & Places Vol.7 (BYG Records, 1972), At the Beginning (Charly Records, 1976), Jet Propelled Photographs (Piccadilly, 1980 [LP], Charly, 2003 [CD]), and several others. These issues contain the track "She's Gone", recorded in April 1967, which is not the same track released in Triple Echo. |
| 1975 | 1&2 (Architects of Space Time) | Double album reissue of the first two albums. |
| 1990 | The Untouchable | Compilation of tracks from Bundles, Softs, and Alive and Well. |
| 1991 | As If... | Curious (probably unauthorized) compilation with six Ratledge/Hopper compositions ranging from 1970's Third to 1973's Six. |
| 1994 | Soft Machine | Live At The Paradiso 1969 plus six tracks from Jet Propelled Photographs. |
| 1995 | The Harvest Albums 1975–1978 | Box set of the Harvest-era albums Bundles (1975) to Alive & Well (1978). |
| 1998 | Canterburied Sounds (Vol. 1–4) | Voiceprint Records released four CDs containing several tracks by various musicians from the Canterbury scene (mainly from the Soft Machine and the Caravan bands), compiled and with notes by Brian Hopper. The four single CDs are re-released in 2013 in a box set. |
| 1998 | Live 1970 (also known as Live in Europe 1970) |
Tracks 1–2 recorded on 13 February 1970 at Swansea (or 14 at the London School of Economics); tracks 3–11 also in Live at the Proms; here, with the edited version of "Out-Bloody-Rageous" from 11:54 to 8:46, and "Esther's Nose Job" split in seven contiguous tracks. |
| 1999 | Fourth / Fifth | CD reissue of Fourth and Fifth, the first CBS-era album Third was already available on CD individually. |
| 2001 | Man in a Deaf Corner: Anthology 1963–1970 | Disc 1 mainly containing live pieces from 1963 to circa 1967, with tracks 7–9 also in Turns On vol. 1 (respectively tracks 2, 1, 16); Disc 2 containing a recording at the Paradiso, 29 March 1969 (tracks 1–10) also in Live at the Paradiso (about 32 min out of 40 min); tracks 11–12 ("Facelift" and "Moon in June" – short versions) also in Live 1970 (respectively tracks 1–2); tracks 13–16 recorded at the Fairfield Halls in Croydon on 26 April 1970, also in Facelift (respectively tracks 4–7); track 17 is a Jakko Jakszyk rendition of "As Long as He Lies Perfectly Still" in conjunction with the two short tracks "That Still and Perfect Summer" and "Astral Projection in Pinner" to appear in his future album The Bruised Romantic Glee Club (Iceni 2006). |
| 2004 | Six / Seven | 2-CD reissue of the last two CBS-era albums Six and Seven. |
| 2005 | Out-Bloody-Rageous: An Anthology 1967–1973 | 2-CD compilation of tracks from up to, and including, Seven. |
| 2005 | Orange Skin Food | 2-CD compilation of previously released live recordings; tracks from Somewhere In Soho, recorded 20–25 April 1971, Facelift, recorded 26 April 1970 and the entire Live in Europe 1970, recorded 13 or 14 February 1970 and 13 August 1970 at the Proms. |
| 2010 | Original Album Classics | 5-CD box set of the 2007 remasters of the CBS-era albums Third, Fourth, Fifth, Six and Seven. |
| 2011 | Tales of Taliesin: The EMI Years Anthology 1975–1981 | 2-CD compilation of tracks from BundlestoLand of Cockayne. |
| 2013 | 68 | Credited to Robert Wyatt, it nonetheless contains an 18 minutes early version of "Rivmic Melodies" (to appear in the 1969 album Volume 2) and a 20 minutes early version of "Moon in June" (to appear in the 1970 album Third), both recorded in U.S. in 1968, after Soft Machine's first dissolution, and just before the new formation with Hopper in place of Ayers. |
| 2013 | Canterburied Sounds | Re-issue in a single 4 CDs edition of the four titles previously released in 1998 by Brian Hopper on Voiceprint. |
| 2014 | Tanglewood Tails | 2 CDs, Disc 1 with tracks 1–4 from 1963 (also in "Canterburied Sounds"), tracks 5–12 from 1967 studio recordings (also in Turns On vol. 1); Disc 2 with tracks 1–4 live from the Col Ballroom, Davenport, Iowa, 11 August 1968 (also in Turns On vol. 2), tracks 5–6 live from the Paradiso, Amsterdam, 29 March 1969 (also in Live at the Paradiso), tracks 7–11 live from the Fairfield Halls, Croydon, 26 April 1970 (also in "Facelift"). The quality of tracks are far better than in both volumes of Turns On (especially "She's Gone" – June 1967 version that now has a quality comparable to the Triple Echo version – that is up to now the only acceptable CD version of this track). |
| 2014 | Turns On (An early collection) | 2 CDs – Reprint from Floating World Records of the two Turns On volumes of 2001, with the same track list. The low quality of the former editions was here maintained. |
| 2014 | Live in 1970 | 4 CDs – Reprint of two live concerts. Disc 1 and Disc 2 recorded at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club on 20–25 April 1970 (already in Somewhere in Soho, Voiceprint, 2004), Disc 3 and Disc 4 recorded at Het Turfschip, Breda, Netherlands on 31 January 1970 (already in Breda Reactor, Voiceprint, 2005). |
| 2014 | Live in the 70s | 4 CDs – Reprint of various live concerts. Disc 1 and the first four tracks on Disc 2 also issued as Live in Paris (Cuneiform, 2004); tracks 5–7 of Disc 2 also appear on Backwards (Cuneiform, 2002); Mark Charig is here wrongly mentioned as the trumpet player; Disc 3 was previously released as Noisette (Cuneiform, 2000) and Disc 4 was previously issued as Drop (Moonjune, 2008). |
| 2015 | Hugh Hopper Volume 9: Anatomy of Facelift |
Five performances of "Facelift", 1969 through 1971. |
| 2019 | Live in London in the early Sixties (LP) | Eight tracks recorded live in 1963 in London, with Brian Hopper (sax), Hugh Hopper (cello, bass), Robert Wyatt (drums, voice), Kevin Ayers (bass, voice), Mike Ratledge (organ), Daevid Allen (guitar). These tracks are also in Man in a Deaf Corner (2001, 2 CD) as tracks 1.01–1.06 in a different remix. |
| 2019 | Top Gear Live in London 1967–1969 (LP) | Side 1 recorded in 1967 with the Ratledge/Wyatt/Ayers line-up; Side 2 recorded in 1969 with Ratledge/Wyatt/H. Hopper/B. Hopper line-up and including "Facelift" and "Moon in June". |
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1974
1975
1976
| Year | Album | Soft Machine members involved | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Wilde Flowers | ||||||||||
| 1965–69 | The Wilde Flowers (released in 1994) | Ayers, B. Hopper, H. Hopper, Wyatt | ||||||||
| The Keith Tippett Group | ||||||||||
| 1970 | You Are Here... I Am There | Charig, Dean, Evans | ||||||||
| 1971 | Dedicated To You, But You Weren't Listening | Babbington, Charig, Dean, Evans, Howard, Wyatt | ||||||||
| Centipede | ||||||||||
| 1971 | Septober Energy | Babbington, Charig, Dean, Evans, Jenkins, Marshall, Wyatt | ||||||||
| Elton Dean | ||||||||||
| 1971 | Elton Dean (re-released as Just Us in 1998) | Dean, Babbington, Charig, Howard, Ratledge | ||||||||
| Karl Jenkins (re-released as Soft Machine in 1994) | ||||||||||
| 1976 | Rubber Riff | Jenkins, Babbington, Etheridge, Marshall | ||||||||
| Hopper / Dean / Tippett / Gallivan | ||||||||||
| 1977 | Cruel But Fair | H. Hopper, Dean | ||||||||
| 1977 | Mercy Dash (released in 1985) | H. Hopper, Dean | ||||||||
| Elton Dean, Alan Skidmore, Chris Laurence, John Marshall | ||||||||||
| 1977 | El Skid | Dean, Marshall | ||||||||
| Planet Earth | ||||||||||
| 1978 | Planet Earth | Jenkins, Ratledge | ||||||||
| Hugh Hopper, Elton Dean, Alan Gowen, Dave Sheen (re-released as Soft Head in 1996) | ||||||||||
| 1978 | Rogue Element | H. Hopper, Dean | ||||||||
| Soft Heap | ||||||||||
| 1979 | Soft Heap | Dean, H. Hopper | ||||||||
| 1979 | Al Dente (released in 2008) | Dean, H. Hopper | ||||||||
| 1982–83 | A Veritable Centaur (released in 1995) | Dean | ||||||||
| Rubba | ||||||||||
| 1979 | Push Button | Jenkins, Ratledge | ||||||||
| 2nd Vision | ||||||||||
| 1980 | First Steps | Etheridge, Sanders | ||||||||
| Rollercoaster | ||||||||||
| 1980 | Wonderin' | Jenkins, Morrissey, Parker, Ratledge, Warleigh | ||||||||
| Hugh Hopper, Elton Dean, Vince Clarke, Frances Knight | ||||||||||
| 1998 | The Mind in the Trees | H. Hopper, Dean | ||||||||
| Soft Works | ||||||||||
| 2003 | Abracadabra | Dean, Holdsworth, H. Hopper, Marshall | ||||||||
| 2003 | Abracadabra in Osaka (released in 2020) | Dean, Holdsworth, H. Hopper, Marshall | ||||||||
| Soft Mountain | ||||||||||
| 2003 | Soft Mountain (released in 2007) | Dean, H. Hopper | ||||||||
| Soft Bounds | ||||||||||
| 2005 | Live at Le Triton | Dean, H. Hopper | ||||||||
| Soft Machine Legacy | ||||||||||
| 2005 | Live In Zaandam | Dean, Etheridge, H. Hopper, Marshall | ||||||||
| 2006 | Soft Machine Legacy | Dean, Etheridge, H. Hopper, Marshall | ||||||||
| 2006 | Live at the New Morning | Dean, Etheridge, H. Hopper, Marshall | ||||||||
| 2007 | Steam | Etheridge, H. Hopper, Marshall, Travis | ||||||||
| 2010 | Live Adventures | Babbington, Etheridge, Marshall, Travis | ||||||||
| 2013 | Burden of Proof | Babbington, Etheridge, Marshall, Travis | ||||||||
| Delta Saxophone Quartet | ||||||||||
| 2007 | Dedicated To You But You Weren't Listening: The Music Of Soft Machine | H. Hopper (as a guest on some tracks) | ||||||||